A Matter of Economics
By Ken Krizner, Sr. Editor
For six consecutive years, from 1980 to 1985, the meat industry had the highest injury rate of any industry in the United States-a rate three times as high as other manufacturing industries. One company that fit that profile, Sun Land Beef Co., was paying $17.92 out of every $100 in payroll for accidents and insurance in 1987.
Executives of the Tolleson, Ariz.-based company were watching worker safety problems eat away at profits. They had to act.
Sun Land created a worker safety program based on reward and chastisement with rules written from the employees' point of view.
The results have been impressive. In 1995, Sun Land Beef's payments for accidents and insurance was down to $4.99 out of every $100. Equally impressive was that between 1986 and 1995, the number of injuries sustained by Sun Land employees was reduced by 855 percent.
"It was a matter of financial survival," notes Barbara Phillips, safety and health director for Sun Land, who was hired by company executives to begin the program. "No matter how good a year the company had in sales, it was always offset by workers' compensation costs."
Sun Land Beef's effort to overcome worker-safety hazards mirrors that of the meat industry's effort.
Industry employees in the packing, boning and fleshing areas are particularly at risk because of the repetitive nature of their jobs. Cumulative trauma disorders, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis and myalgia, have cost the industry millions of dollars in workers' compensation costs and fines imposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
But the man in charge of OSHA says the meat industry has taken big steps in its efforts to improve worker safety.
"The meat industry shows that working with OSHA can move an industry to take a positive step and aggressive approach to solving the safety and health problems of its workplaces," Administrator Joseph A. Dear points out. Dear has acknowledged worker safety programs at Austin, Minn.-based Hormel Foods Corp. and Northern Aurora, Ill.-based Aurora Packing Co. as exemplary.
And in a speech to food industry executives in October, Dear noted two other meat companies for their worker safety programs:
-- Cargill Inc. instituted strong programs to control musculoskeletal disorders in a Missouri turkey processing plant following an OSHA inspection and citations. The result was an 83 percent drop in lost workdays in 1993 and a 98 percent drop in lost workdays in 1994. Turnover was sharply reduced.
A spokesman for Minneapolis-based Cargill said it saved $3,500 an employee in workers' compensation costs, and that the program to control such disorders paid for itself through these reduced costs.
-- Cincinnati-based Kluener Packing Inc. decided to work with the OSHA-funded Ohio Consultation program to reduce its injuries and illnesses. As a result, the lost workday injury rate dropped from 16.3 in 1988 to three in 1994. Kluener became a member of the Ohio's recognition program as a reward for its good performance in occupational safety and health.
"OSHA has finally come to know the meat industry," points out Earl Berry, senior vice president of operations for Columbus, Ohio-based Bob Evans Farms Inc. "It used to use the industry as an example. Now, it is there to help us."
That is a far cry from 1988 when OSHA criticized the industry's lack of employee training.
"Many workers are injured because they often do not receive the safety training they need, even on jobs involving dangerous equipment where training is clearly essential," according to the agency's 1988 "Safety and Health Guide for the Meatpacking Industry."
OSHA pushed the industry to develop written comprehensive training programs, not only to identify safety and health hazards, but prevention through proper equipment use and maintenance. Meatpackers took OSHA up on its suggestion. They developed safety committees and made employees a part of the solution.
Studies showing that the best way to curb costs resulting from cumulative trauma disorders is to prevent potential injuries from happening in the first place were embraced by the industry. Ergonomics became the source from which all safety programs emanated. Job rotation, automation and other new technology were given top priority.
"[Companies] came to realize that a lack of worker safety was costly to them," Berry notes. "It was costly because for every day that an employee missed a day of work, an assignment went unperformed."
In 1993 (the most-recent figures available), meatpacking employees suffered more than 123,000 non-fatal occupational injuries and illnesses, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure was down from 127,000 in 1992. The incident rate of lost workdays for meatpacking plants because of injuries was 11.7 for every 100 employees in 1993, down from 30.4 in 1987. (See chart, page 80.)
While no one will dispute that meatpacking remains a hazardous industry, it is now nonetheless a safer industry.
Empowering employees
Sun Land Beef was a living example of the BLS figures. In 1985, 330 employees accounted for 1,626 lost time days because of injuries. "When 18 percent of your payroll goes toward accidents and insurance, something needs to be done," Phillips says.
What Sun Land did was listen to employees. "We wanted to get their opinions," Phillips points out. "Besides, if you don't have the employees behind you, no safety program will work. Talking to the employees was a way to show them that their opinions were important."
The first safety program initiated by Sun Land was drug screening. There was no apprehension on the part of employees, Phillips notes, because there were no employees who wanted to work next to someone who was drunk or on drugs. Employee safety committees were established, and the top priority throughout the process is education.
"Ignorance and lack of training can cost a company thousands of dollars," Phillips stresses.
Speakers were brought in from OSHA and insurance companies. These proved to be useful tools because it gave employees a different perspective on worker safety.
The program is fine-tuned each year. Groups of 25 employees are retrained annually. The employees are asked what is and isn't working. If something is not working, Sun Land is not afraid to throw it out or overhaul it.
But one thing is for sure: Everyone is held accountable. Phillips recounts a day when a top management executive walked into the processing line without earplugs-a safety violation. The executive was given a reprimand.
"The [executive] was very embarrassed, but it showed the employees that everyone was accountable-from top to bottom," Phillips stresses.
Individual employees in the various departments are eligible for $50 rewards-just as long no one in the department has not sustained a medical injury.
Perhaps more importantly, there is a downside for non-compliance. An employee who accrues three tickets within six months receives a three-day suspension; five tickets in six months brings a five-day suspension and one day of retraining; and six tickets within six months is grounds for dismissal. Employee records are wiped clean after six months.
Making the point
Employees are listening. Only one employee has been fired for safety violations, according to Phillips.
And Sun Land's lost time days because of injuries was reduced to 86 in 1995, despite the company tripling its work force from 1985.
"Employees know they make the difference," Phillips says. "[The employees] are adults; they know they are responsible for themselves. It makes for a better work force." Employee involvement is a necessity when designing worker safety programs.
"A safety program won't work without employee input," Bob Evans' Berry points out.
Bob Evans uses company stock as an incentive for employees to attain safety goals. Employees can earn stock each quarter, as well as lose it if they are held accountable by a safety committee for an accident or injury. The result has been a 25 percent to 30 percent reduction in injuries and lost time because of injuries.
"Worker safety has to be at the employee level or the employees will not pay attention," Berry says.
Phillips warns: "A company has to get employees to believe in a program or they will try to get around the rules."
The rules have also changed for the meat industry.
After ignoring worker safety for decades, and the ergonomics influence that caught hold in the late 1980s, Berry believes the industry has found a middle of the road pleasing to both management and employees. "Everything [in the late 1980s] was tied to ergonomics," he says. "It put worker safety into a category, which allowed companies to better define what it is and how to improve it."
ASSOCIATED ARTICLE:
Dear: Congressional reform plans would damage worker safety protection
If at least one member of Congress has his way, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will be more than slightly altered. And it won't be as intrusive as it is perceived to be in businesses.
Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.) is sponsoring legislation aimed at reforming the agency. His bill would shift half of its funding for enforcement to other areas, place new emphasis on consultation and training programs, require that risk assessment and cost benefit analysis be industry-specific, and would attempt to take the "quota mentality" out of the penalty system.
"I believe that OSHA has become fundamentally misdirected," Ballenger said. "Instead of promoting and encouraging workplace safety and health, OSHA has become known for issuing nonsensical regulations, and is preoccupied with issuing fines on unsuspecting employers."
OSHA Administrator Joseph A. Dear, in a speech in December, criticized Ballenger's bill, saying it would literally gut efforts to protect workers through enforcement and bring standard-setting to a halt.
"If enacted, [the bill] would result in safety and health becoming an optional, advisory service of government," Dear warned.
"Will common sense enforcement and regulation improve OSHA? Yes," he added. "Will gutting OSHA's ability to enforce standards improve worker health and safety? Absolutely not."
A Labor Department study contends that OSHA inspections have led to a 22 percent reduction in injury and illness within three years after inspections with penalties. Furthermore, injury and illness rates have declined in industries where OSHA has focused its efforts, such as the meatpacking industry.
Barbara Phillips, safety and health director for Tolleson, Ariz.-based Sun Land Beef Co., cautions against going too far to reform OSHA.
She points out OSHA representatives were invaluable in helping Sun Land establish its safety program.
"OSHA was the greatest consultant I had," Phillips notes. "Everybody [who criticizes OSHA] focuses on compliance. But its training and consulting [services] are the greatest asset American industry has."
Meanwhile, a Senate committee is debating an OSHA reform bill that would exempt employers if the workplace has been reviewed by a state consultant or other third party, if the workplace has had no fatalities in the past year, or if it has fewer lost work days because of injuries than the average for the employer's industry. Employers would also be exempt if they have fewer than 10 employees and are in "safe" industries.
Senate Democrats released statistics indicating that three out of four U.S. employers would be automatically exempted from standard OSHA inspections under those provisions.
Dear said: "While the bill provides employers with inspection exemptions, it does not appear to include provisions which would strengthen workers' rights or protection."
The agency's next objective was to develop an ergonomic standard. But that has become a hostage to the political reality that Republicans control Congress. Dear admitted last year that the GOP Congress was the reason for withholding the rules. Now, with OSHA's fiscal year 1996 budget caught in the GOP-Clinton administration budget showdown, spokeswoman Susan Hall Fleming told Meat Marketing & Technology it is unlikely the new rules would be unveiled this year.
"Because of the uncertainty of how much money we will be budgeted, we are restricted as to what we can do," she stressed.